


Pray You Now, Forget and Forgive

by SvengoolieCat



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: 004 is the overprotective homicidal sibling Q never wanted but got anyway, 00s and their favorite boffin, Angst, Bond has no idea what he wants out of life, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Pining, Post-SPECTRE, Pre-Slash, Q dressed to kill, Q has a backbone of steel, Q is a bamf, Shakespeare Sonnets - Freeform, Snark, murder cat cameos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 15:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7807066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SvengoolieCat/pseuds/SvengoolieCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-SPECTRE. </p>
<p>In which Bond is lost (figuratively) and trying to figure out what he’s missing and what he wants out of life, Q is trying to be chill about everything and failing miserably (becoming a fluffy-haired little ball of rage in the meantime), and Shakespeare’s sonnets have never been gayer.</p>
<p>Chapter 5: Resolutions, beginnings, death, and Q is 1000% done with pussy-footing around things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Since I Left You

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of a sequel to "Of Cats and Mortgages" but easily stand-alone.
> 
> Shout out to AsMyWimseyTakesMe for her help as a beta!

_Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;_

_And that which governs me to go about_

_Doth part his function, and is partly blind,_

_Seems seeing, but effectively is out;_

_For it no form delivers to the heart_

_Of bird, of flower, or shape, which it doth latch:_

_Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,_

_Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;_

_For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,_

_The more sweet flavor or deformed’st creature,_

_The mountain or the sea, the day or night,_

_The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature:_

_Incapable of more, replete with you,_

_My most true mind thus maketh mind untrue. (113)_

 

Florence was the first time Bond thought that his mind was playing tricks on him. After leaving MI-6 with Madeleine Swann riding shotgun in his newly restored Aston Martin DB5, they had road-tripped their way through the Continent like ordinary tourists.

It was nice to visit places for pleasure instead of planned assassinations. He’d not actually played the tourist since his days on leave in the Navy, and Madeleine was happy enough to show him how it was done. If anything, her insistence in being a tourist and experiencing the best in the ways of food, art, history, and culture had a desperate tinge to it. As if she was trying to show him what the world looked like in bright sunlight as opposed to shadows and under the cover of radio silence and hacked CCTV.

As if she were afraid he would slip back into the shadows if she didn’t keep trying to make him connect with the world. No amount of cajoling or reassurance that he wasn’t going back seemed to make her believe that he wanted this for real.

She left him for a few moments in the Uffizi Gallery so he stood in front of Botticelli’s _The Birth of Venus_ while he waited. From the right angle, with her long red-gold hair and classically beautiful oval face, Venus looked a bit like a voluptuous 0011. In fact, he recalled that Suzy had even dressed as her for one Halloween party—while 0011 hadn’t been entirely naked at the time, she’d not left much to the imagination. She’d been wearing little more than a tiny bikini, artistically placed shells, and a wicked expression. He remembered that field agents and Q-Branch boffins alike spent the evening tripping over their own feet. She won best costume.

One of the few people unaffected by 0011 had been Q, who’d given his agent a long and long-suffering look before sighing expansively and turning back to Moneypenny. Later that evening, Q had been the one to fetch a blanket from his office to bundle her up in and sent her home safely via one of the agency drivers.

He looked out for his agents in small ways, Bond realized. Double-ohs had a high mortality rate and few human connections, and lived accordingly. They knew they were disposable, sent out with the worst of assignments, and no mission that a double-oh was given was an easy one. If it were, a lesser agent would handle it. Every mission could be their last. And after a while, it took a toll. They lived in a kill or be killed world where trust was rare because betrayal was not.

Double-ohs were monsters in human shape. Bond himself was one of the worst, underneath the cultivated veneer of charm. Q never seemed to mind or flinch away. He treated them decently, with the same care and consideration he showed any of his precious bits of technology. He’d protected them, lobbied for assignments best suited for each of his agents’ strengths, and under his care the constant turnover of double-ohs had slowed down considerably. In return, Q was quite possibly the best protected person in England, second only to the Queen herself. The delightful thing was, he had a loyal, lethal, and half-feral wolf pack who would burn down half of London if he asked them nicely, and seemed entirely clueless to it all.

A man with an hideous cardigan and messy black hair materialized at Bond’s elbow. A sharp bolt of expectation shivered through him as though he’d touched a live current. Some of the tension he didn’t realize he had loosened in his shoulders.

“If you ask me what I see, I’m going to say things your young ears shouldn’t hear,” Bond said.

The man looked over at him with a frown. “Mi scusi?”

Bond blinked rapidly and the man’s features lost all familiarity. It wasn’t—

“There you are,” Madeleine appeared at his other side, sliding her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Who is this?”

“No one,” Bond said quickly. “I’m starving. Lunch?”

Madeleine smiled but her eyes were glacial as they walked away. “James. What was that? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Just someone I thought I knew. I didn’t.”

The smile became more fixed, but she let it go as he led her outside to a small bistro he’d discovered some years before. But if she had any thoughts on the postcard and the kitschy souvenir pen he bought from the gallery gift shop before they left, she kept them to herself.

*******

After Florence it was Rome and the Vatican before they headed for wine country. Bond’s collection of postcards grew with every interesting place he went.

“Are you going to send them?” Madeleine asked lightly over breakfast one morning. Unasked went the question: _Who do you think of when you buy these?_

Bond paused. “I thought I might just collect them. I don’t know.”

The door opened and the sound of real laughter preceded a couple stumbling inside, fighting with an umbrella and shaking water from the torrential rainstorm everywhere. They chattered to each other in rapid-fire Italian, and again Bond felt his pulse quicken. The woman was tall and dark skinned, wearing a black dress that showed off her slender figure excellently, a pair of pointy stilettos in one hand. The man was skinny and laughed with a wild abandon as she brandished the shoes at him in half-hearted threat.

The recognition fled Bond as soon as it came, leaving hollowness behind. The scrambled eggs and toast turned to stone in his stomach. Of course it was neither Q nor Moneypenny. For one, neither of his friends ever looked at each other with such soppy expressions, and the one time he’d caught Moneypenny brandishing a shoe at Q, he’d snatched it and started musing over the ways he could weaponize them. When he talked about removing the heel, she’d tried to snatch them back, resulting in a brief tug of war that ended the with Quartermaster fleeing Moneypenny’s office and with M just shaking his head and hiding in his office for the rest of the morning.

“It’s normal to be homesick, you know,” Madeleine said, quietly. “Especially after such a change and traumatic circumstances.”

“Traumatic circumstances is every other Tuesday for a double-oh,” Bond said. “And you’ve seen my flat. What do I have to go back to or miss?”

“Friends, coworkers, lovers, family,” Madeleine said. She hesitated, gathering her thoughts. Bond felt his spine stiffening.

“We don’t have those,” he said. “Having connections isn’t encouraged. Just gives enemies a pressure point to use.”

“No one goes through life alone, not even your kind,” she said. “There has to be someone to go home to, otherwise why would you bother returning? You can’t give everything and not have something in return.”

“We don’t live long enough for it to matter.”

“You did,” she said. “You had friends. An entire team. They trusted you, and you trusted them in turn. Your boss, that woman. The computer geek.”

“I doubt they so much as think of me,” Bond said. “They’re too busy saving the world to be concerned with a wayward agent.”

After a month of being gone, no one had attempted to contact him, not even about SPECTRE. Bond really didn’t want to admit to himself or anyone else that the radio silence stung a bit. He’d gotten used to Q’s even tones in his ear, and teasing messages from Moneypenny, and the occasional invitation to a pub to watch football with Tanner—or just an update on team scores when Bond was out of country.

She smiled. “Oh, I wouldn’t think that. Your Q seemed perfectly annoyed when you showed up with me in his hotel room.”

“Q is always annoyed with me,” Bond said, finality in his tone. “Do you think the rain will stop anytime soon?”

Madeleine took a breath and visibly restrained herself from saying anything further. The look on her face was complicated, like she was fighting her instincts to keep digging but was half-afraid of what she might excavate for both of them.

Finally she smiled. “A quiet day in with a book would be lovely, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure we can find a good way to pass the time.”

That night he looked through his postcards threw them all in the trash.


	2. Where Art Thou, Muse?

_Where art thou, Muse, that thou forgett’st so long_

_To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?_

_Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song,_

_Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?_

_Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem_

_In gentle numbers time so idly spent;_

_Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,_

_And gives thy pen both skill and argument._

_Rise, resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey,_

_If Time have any wrinkle graven there;_

_If any, be a satire to decay,_

_And make Time’s spoils despised everywhere._

_Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life;_

_So thou prevent’st his scythe and crooked knife.  (100)_

 

“He’s not gone,” Moneypenny said. “James Bond will always turn up like a bad penny.”

Q kept his gaze on his lunch. “No, he’s done with us.”

When she was quiet, he looked up from his sandwich. They were sequestered in his office, the work on his desk shoved aside so they had space to eat.

He was in the middle of monitoring two different 00 missions, and couldn’t leave the branch until the critical period for each was over. Well, he could. His team was effective. But something kept him lurking in his basement lair. He refused to believe the reason was paranoia, but if it was, well Nine Eyes cast as dark and deep a shadow as SPECTRE. In his younger years, when he was more than a letter, he’d relished the challenge of an opponent that could match him. These days? These days Q felt more like a cornered wolf, snapping at anything within his reach. The idea that a system such as Nine Eyes could—and did—sneak up on him, threaten his very work and the lives of his agents kept him up at night.

So instead of going out for lunch, as was their habit once or twice a week, Moneypenny had once again proved her goddess-status by appearing with food.

Her dark eyes were a bit compassionate, and Q really didn’t feel like being the object of someone’s pity.

“We all go through a phase with Bond,” she said. “Whether it’s hero worship or a crush, believe me, most of us have been there, done that. It’s how we separate the humans from the robots.”

He mustered a smile at her attempt at humor. “Is that what the kids are calling it, these days? ‘A phase?’”

“HR protested the other words we had. Made us sit through seminars and everything.”

“That’s a turnaround.”

“They learned not to make him go to any HR seminars after the Great HR Debacle of 2009. Before my time, but I heard he seduced the trainer. Pretty much turned the poor woman into a giggling schoolgirl in front of everyone. No one’s entirely sure how he did it.”

Q picked at his chips. “I thought that was an urban legend?”

Moneypenny shrugged. “So’s he, really.”

“Regardless,” Q said. “It’s been two months, and we’ve heard not a peep from him. I suggested to M that it might be time to appoint a new 007. Or retire the number. Either way, we need help cleaning up SPECTRE and being a man down is not doing us any favors. All our agents are stretched at capacity as it is.”

She blinked in surprise and then grinned at him. “Why, Q. Is that a spark of anger I sense under all that Vulcan-like calm?”

He threw a chip at her. “Do not attempt to psychoanalyze me with _Star Trek_.”

She snatched the chip out of the air and ate it without missing a beat. Damn those Jedi reflexes of hers.

Q huffed a laugh through his nose. “In any case, there’s been a bit of chatter about some arms dealers up to naughty tricks in France.”

“Between France and Belgium, the Continent has turned into a breeding ground for every would-be terrorist with an ax to grind and a taste for chaos.” She dug into the paper bag that she’d brought their lunch in and found a couple chocolate biscuits, offering him one.

“These ones know what they’re doing,” Q said. “We’ve been watching them for years, but they’ve been smart and quiet. They had ties to Quantum, and seemed peripherally involved with SPECTRE. They weren’t big enough for Blofeld to deal with, but now that he’s been removed, they’re making a power play. We need someone inside, and quickly.”

Q held half a biscuit in his teeth and dug through a pile of files and handed it to Moneypenny. Her mouth thinned as she skimmed through the info. “I’ll give this to M. You’re right—we need someone to get in and eliminate them.”

“Or bring them around to our way of thinking,” Q mused. “They die, someone new takes over. We bring them under our control, we have a conduit to some of the quieter, less visible terrorist networks. If they can’t see our side of things, we eliminate them before someone else gets any smart ideas. Or makes them a better offer.”

“Last thing we need is a bidding war for them.”

“Precisely.”

“I don’t suppose you have any ideas about how to go about doing this?” There was a sparkle in her eye that meant trouble and mayhem. Q felt something cold and fanged in his own soul wake up and take notice.

“I have a few ideas,” he said, with a grin that was all teeth.

“Too bad Bond isn’t here,” Moneypenny said. “This would be right up his alley.”

“We’ll have to make do without him” Q said, dryly. “Go get me a new 007, Miss Moneypenny. Preferably one that will respect my tech and who won’t abandon us in the wink of a pretty girl’s shiny Electra-complex eye.”

She laughed, then sobered. “He always comes back, Q. He doesn’t know how to be gone.”

Q smiled like it hurt. He’d had months of quiet Saturday or Sunday nights in with his (their?) cat, watching campy science fiction and missing the man who used to sit on the other end of the sofa, or who had haunted Q’s drink cabinet, or hovered at his side like a curious cat as Q tinkered with a project on his coffee table. Months of waiting—not that he’d ever admit it out loud to anyone but the cat—for a postcard that never came.

_[“I’ll send you a postcard.”_

_“Please don’t.”]_

No, James Bond was done and gone on with his life.

Q couldn’t even be mad about that. He could be mad professionally about being abandoned in the middle of one of the worst cleanups in MI-6 history, yes. He could be mad about being left to handle the mess and chaos in the agent’s wake. But personally? At least he wouldn’t have to stand over the grave when Bond’s luck inevitably ran out. Whatever they were—coworkers, friends, sometime almost-lovers?—was clearly over. It stung a bit, but what did he expect, really? Had he ever convinced himself totally that it would be a happy ending for either one of them?

“This is the third time he’s left the service, Eve. He even said goodbye, after a fashion. I don’t think he wants to come back. I think that’s the point.”

He couldn’t tell exactly what Moneypenny was thinking, but he got the impression that homicide was a recurring theme. She reached over the desk with careful familiarity and ruffled his already wild hair with some affection.

“All right, boffin. We’ll find you a new 007. Preferably one who is cute and not at all a pain in the arse that I want to shoot.”

“Excellent.”


	3. Accuse Me Thus

_Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all_

_Wherein I should your great deserts repay;_

_Forgot upon your dearest love to call,_

_Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;_

_That I have frequent been with unknown minds,_

_And given to time your own dear-purchased right;_

_That I have hoisted sail to all the winds_

_Which should transport me farthest from your sight._

_Book both my willfulness and errors down,_

_And on just proof surmise accumulate;_

_Bring me within the level of your frown,_

_But shoot not at me your wakened hate;_

_Since my appeal says I did strive to prove_

_The constancy and virtue of your love. (117)_

 

Despite his tastes in the finer things in life, Bond was fine with living the gypsy life. Constant travel had a way of soothing the restlessness that had its claws buried in his shoulders. Most people felt safe if they had their own castle: a house, an apartment, somewhere they called their own. Bond had been killing people long enough to know that the safety people thought they had was an illusion, a kind of naïve fantasy that if they pulled the covers over their head that the monsters under the bed couldn’t get them. The truth was that most houses weren’t necessarily defendable, and even a conscious variation in daily routines eventually led to patterns or extreme tedium that frustrated people into making mistakes. People were inherently methodical—they liked certain restaurants, parks, venues, routes to work. There was comfort and stability in patterns and preferences.

Bond neatly avoided the problem altogether by simply not being in one place long enough to start any kind of habit.

Still, he noticed the constant travel was wearing on Madeleine. After nearly six months of restive movement from place to place as the wind took them, real life began to call to her. He knew it when she started looking at the places they went with a speculative eye—he caught her looking up hospitals and psychiatric practices, looking at the realty sections in the newspapers he insisted on buying every morning. Soon, his high-class hotel reservations were summarily vetoed in favor of more long term hotels that resembled cramped impersonal little flats more than anything else.

He saw it when he caught her watching children play in the park with a surprisingly soft smile. The expression threw him—he was used to the harder edges, the icy blonde persona, the woman who could be deadly and looked it, who watched him with carefully neutral expressions when he woke up from yet another nightmare that could only be killed with whiskey.

Of course she wouldn’t indulge him in a transient lifestyle forever. So when they ended up in Paris, he nudged the ads for flats and townhouses outside the city toward her at breakfast.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Anything, so long as it’s defensible.”

It was the wrong thing to say. The neutral, if mildly irritated look was back.

“You know I still have enemies other than my homicidal foster-brother,” he said, carefully. “While I doubt SPECTRE has any further interest in you, that’s only one organization I’ve pissed off over the years.”

_You know this_ , went unsaid. _You know what I am. What I was_.

Her lips thinned. “I don’t want to spend my life looking over my shoulder, James.”

“You won’t have to. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

As soon as he said them, the words rang hollow. How many times had he said those very words to someone—a mark, a target, an occasional lover, whether or not he meant them? They always believed him. It was a reflexive kind of manipulation: look them straight in the eyes, don’t smile, open body language, promise them unrealistic safety.

Madeleine’s ice blue eyes searched his face, before she nodded. She didn’t entirely believe him, to her credit. But she wanted to, and he knew that desire often won out in the end.

“Wouldn’t want to get sniped over breakfast,” she said, in a rare moment of gallows humor.

Bond grinned. “Or while watching the crap telly you prefer,” he said. “Imagine the last thing you see being a catty American housewife.”

“Hush you. I don’t make fun of your Doctor Who obsession.”

_[“Are you going to mock me for my television choices of the evening?”_

_Bond glanced at the television. “Is that Doctor Who?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Then, no, I won’t mock.”]_

Bond blinked the sudden memory away. He could hear Q’s carefully enunciated words in his ear as though he were wearing an earpiece and for one moment he felt his stomach flip upside down. Longing, he thought. It seemed an age since he’d heard that measured voice on the other end of the line. For a split second, he wished he was back on that sofa. How many Saturday nights had Q quietly welcomed him into his routines, heckled camp science fiction, and scolded him about feeding Jack too much people food?

Double-Ohs didn’t have homes, or families, or ties. They didn’t even have many friends, having more assets and contacts than anything else. It wouldn’t do for a spy and assassin to have weaknesses or diversions from their purpose. And it wasn’t like the secrecy and demands of the job made for stable relationships anyway. There were things he could never tell Madeleine, no matter how much she thought she knew about him. As a result, a Double-oh’s home was wherever he or she was, so they never got homesick.

Homesickness was an unpleasant feeling, he thought, squashing the impulse to call Q in the middle of the morning. But after six months, almost seven, what would he say? _Car’s running great, France is beautiful, how are the cats, did you ever finish reading Moby Dick?_ Bond wondered if they still kept track of him with the Smart Blood. Did any of them look in on him every so often, to see if he was still breathing? Did _he_? Probably not.  

He stood up from the rickety chair in what passed for the breakfast nook. God, he hated extended stay hotels. “I’m going for a run. Need me to bring anything back?”

“No,” she said, accepting a kiss on the cheek.

*******

“A bottle of champagne,” Bond told the waiter. “We’re celebrating tonight.”

“Very good, sir.”

Bond straightened his cufflinks and grinned at Madeleine. She smiled back at him, a little more freely than she had done of late. She’d been hired at a reputable hospital by an administrator who had taken one look at her qualifications and practically threw himself at her feet, and the ink on the paperwork for the new flat was dry. They could move in by the end of the week. Madeleine was involved in decoration, and Bond was inclined to let her be. After all, his own apartment in London had been stark and it’s not like he had a clue of how to turn a flat into a home anyway.

He didn’t think of a wall of full bookcases, a messy desk with half-completed projects, cat toys underfoot, or a ridiculously comfortable sofa with a colorful quilt folded over the back. _He didn’t_.

“We should have a housewarming,” she said. “Just a few people we know. It will help us settle into the community faster.”

“Do we even know a few people?”

“I’ll invite some people from the hospital. It will help my integration there. One of the doctors on staff was a friend of mine in med school, she’ll help introduce me around. You’ll like her husband, he’s a police officer. I’m sure you will find common ground.”

“As long as the common ground isn’t him arresting me over a body.”

“Perhaps we should try to avoid that,” she said. “You know, with your skill set, you could probably join the force.”

“I’ve been reliably informed that I’m more of a Stormtrooper than a Jedi, Madeleine.”

Her lips twitched. “The police force,” she clarified. “Have you given thought to what you would like to do with yourself now that you’re retired?”

“I’m keeping my options open, at the moment,” he said. Even with his hobby of resurrection, he’d never expected to make it to retirement. Let alone retirement abroad, and in what’s turned out to be a surprisingly stable, if somewhat boring, long-term relationship. Bond always figured he’d eventually die in the field, probably in a melodramatic Hollywood action sequence involving blazing guns and rocket launchers and manic world dictators. By contrast, every other endgame just seemed…oddly disappointing.

“It must be strange, having so many options to consider,” she said. Their meals arrived, and she began cutting her roasted chicken into small, uniform bites. “After taking orders for most of your adult life, finding a new direction can be overwhelming.”

“I never took orders well,” he said. M, both of them, often despaired of that quality. Loudly, and in Bond’s presence.

“Depends on how much you respect and trust the source, I expect,” she said.

Bond smiled and turned his attention to his own dinner. There were times when he imagined he was back in a grim room, across from a shrink who’s unenviable job was to poke at the dark recesses of his mind. It was the hazard of running away with a psychiatrist—even an innocent conversation felt like there was an ulterior motive sometimes. However, as she was able to put up with the particular habits ingrained in him as a Double-oh, the least he could do was not be a complete prick whenever the conversation got a little personal.

He’s pretty sure that personal conversations were a requirement for any meaningful relationship, but it didn’t mean he had to like it overmuch.

A group in the back of the restaurant caught his eye. All men, sharply dressed, expensive drinks, heads close together, nondescript briefcases. They occupied the corner booth in the corner, but the wait staff seemed to avoid getting too close to them.

And they had body guards. Bond’s interest piqued, he counted no less than five, all seated at innocuous tables near their principles, ostensibly posing as fellow diners. But he noticed that they pushed their appetizers around without eating and that they only had water glasses in front of them. One or two people not drinking wasn’t odd—but a group of people not drinking screamed protection detail, especially in France when wine was almost a default.

Bond had done enough work in France to be familiar with the local Major Players, but although this bunch seemed familiar, he couldn’t place them. They weren’t intelligence and he didn’t recognize them as politicians, so that only left one more class of individuals Bond had regular contact with in his line of work.

He really, really hated not knowing, and wondered if there was a way to lure one of them away into the alley for a quick little conversation…?

“James?”

His attention snapped back to Madeleine, who had a faint line between her eyes. “Yes?”

“I was asking you about colors,” she said. “I was thinking of repainting the flat.”

“Anything you like is fine,” he said. Then, when her expression started morphing into something a little sharper, he said, “I like blues.”

“Perhaps a nautical theme, then,” she said. The stress line deepened. “Do you know those men? You keep watching them.”

“No,” he said. “I feel I should know them, but I don’t. Excuse me.”

He escaped to the men’s room to wash his hands and rethink his life decisions.

Bond honestly didn’t plan to meet one of the guards he was contemplating in the bathroom. After Madeleine had distracted him, he didn’t notice that one of them was missing when he got up from the table. And he certainly didn’t think that they’d noticed him.

_Oh, how quickly he fell into civilian ways without meaning to_ , he thought, staring down the barrel of a gun.

_Happily, other reflexes were still quick_ , he noted, as he disarmed the man, pistol whipped him across the temple, and smashed the guy’s head into the sink for good measure. Bathrooms were delightful to fight in if you had the upper hand. All those lovely hard surfaces to bash enemies on, with a quick cleanup right close at hand. Bond dragged the unconscious man to the handicapped stall, and rifled through his pockets. Wallet, gun, two knives. Bond took everything.

Bond’s blood sang as adrenaline shocked through his system. He washed his hands—perfectly steady—looked himself in the eye and straightened his tie.

Less than five minutes later, Bond had sufficiently distracted Madeleine from asking too many questions as he ushered her out of the restaurant. And if she was at all suspicious of his motives for driving them to a upscale hotel instead of the place they’d been staying, he pressed her back into the mattress with enough enthusiasm to be sure to distract her quite thoroughly.

All the while, the stolen items in his pocket were in the back of his mind. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark, and Bond wanted to know what it was.

 


	4. O Truant Muse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. RL and all that. We're almost at the end!

_O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends_

_For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?_

_Both truth and beauty on my love depends;_

_So dost thou too, and therein dignified._

_Make answer, Muse: wilt thou not haply say,_

_‘Truth needs no color, with his color fixt;_

_Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay;_

_But best is best, if never intermixt’?_

_Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?_

_Excuse not silence so: for’t lies in thee_

_To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,_

_And to be praised of ages yet to be._

_Then do thy office, Muse: I teach thee how_

_To make him seem long hence as he shows now. (101)_

 

The new 007 was delightful. He was polite, attractive, quick to smile, respected boundaries, and was all around pleasant in a way that scared everyone more than if he had been the sort to show up with bloody scalps of his enemies as trophies. Q wanted to hate him, he really did. He understood the turnover—that the number wasn’t going to be retired just because the last one to hold it was larger than life and twice as pretty in Tom Ford and Armani. It felt weirdly disloyal to have such a quick and good rapport with the new agent, but despite his threats to ruin credit scores and hack traffic lights Q wasn’t often a petty man.

New 007 also shared Q’s obsessive love of tea, could make a cup good enough to make angels cry, and was in the habit of bringing back unusual local blends from his travels for himself. Once he and Q had gotten into a lively discussion of the health benefits of green tea and a debate over what qualified as “real” tea (Q strenuously objected to decaffeinated herbal teas on principle, save chamomile), he brought extra for Q.

He even brought back his tech, more often than not.

Oh, Q did like him, despite all.

Didn’t mean Q trusted him. He seemed a little too well adjusted. It was pretty common knowledge that Double-Ohs were generally pretty fucked in the head, and this one—with his tea and hobbies and ridiculously straight teeth—was probably going to turn out to be the most broken toy on their island of misfits. At least Bond, who was the living embodiment of whimsical charm itself, came with a pretty clear disclaimer.

Q resolutely let that thought alone. He’d been summoned up from his dungeons to run a security briefing on some arms dealers in France that the new 007 had successfully infiltrated, and he would need his focus.

“Q! Finally come to join us in our glass tower?”

He favored 004 with a smile as she fell into step with him, offering her his arm as she had more or less trained any man she halfway liked to do when walking with her. She settled a hand in the crook of his elbow and grinned winningly up at him. Scarlett had cultivated a definite air of a curvy, classically beautiful 1940s screen siren. She favored red, red lipstick and looked utterly innocuous in heels and a blue print flare dress. If he hadn’t seen her disembowel a man and mince lightly over his body, he expected even he would be taken in by her deliberate camouflage. Even now, he knew she had a weapon or two secreted somewhere on her, and oddly enough, felt better about that.

“Under duress, I’m afraid,” he said.

Her fingers tightened ever so slightly. “Oh, I know what you mean. This place is a nightmare. You can tell men built it—it screams ego to the sky and completely fails at considering practical things, like snipers. No offense, Q.”

“No offense taken, and I agree with you. I’m sure there are better ways to pretend to be transparent that don’t require actual, literal transparency.” He sighed. “I much prefer my dungeons under the Thames. Could you imagine Q-Branch in here?”

Her laugh was engagingly musical. “Oh, I would pay money to see that, lovely. The sheer amount of destruction in the first week would have the whole lot of you kicked out.”

Q hummed agreeably. “And the cats would have to be retired. Jack wouldn’t mind becoming a couch potato and getting fat eating kibble all day, but Nat would probably kill every bird, squirrel, mole, and yappy Chihuahua in my neighborhood.”

They navigated the stairs in silence for a moment. “In any case, you’re here for the briefing on the French arms dealing, I heard,” she said. Q raised an eyebrow at her, and she answered it with one eyebrow lift of her own. “I thought I might sit in.”

“I thought you were on mandatory leave,” he said.

“I am. But. A little birdie tells me things that make me a little twitchy.”

Q rolled his eyes. “You’re going to make me ask. All right. What is happening that is making the unflappable Scarlett Papava nervous.”

“Our illustrious and adorable Quartermaster being sent in the field.” Her dark eyes were somber. Q smiled tightly, remembering with no fondness whatsoever what nearly befell him the last time he took a more active role.

“Ah,” he said.

“Exactly,” Scarlett said, drawing them both to a halt outside the conference room. He hadn’t realized they’d arrived. Scarlett surveyed him critically, tugging his dark suit jacket straight and running fingers through his hair in an ostensible attempt to tame it, although the mischief in her eyes said she just wanted to pet him. It was a weird impulse a lot of people seemed to have. He stood under her hands, trying not to feel like a kid being sent off to a first day of term. She tugged his tie straight and brushed his shoulders. “They also plan to send you out with the new one,” she muttered with a hint of a sneer. “I’d like to volunteer my services, instead.”

“I have no objections,” he said.

What she didn’t say was _I don’t quite trust him yet_. And he didn’t quite say _Neither do I, exactly_. But they smiled at each other quickly and in accord regardless.

She stepped back. “There, Q, you look almost presentable.”

“Well, thank you kindly, Miss Papava,” he drawled, opening the door for her.

********

[2 days later]

It wasn’t that Q was afraid of flying. He just knew, intimately, all the different things that could go wrong, and he wasn’t fond of putting his life into a stranger’s hands. Knowing that with five minutes and a fit of rage, he could shut down entire airports and drop planes from the air was a sobering bit of knowledge known only to himself and his Double-Ohs.

Oh, Q was well aware of what people thought about him. In some ways, his camouflage of harmlessness is as crafted as Scarlett’s. His eccentric clothing choices—so much more professional now than he was when he’d started, and he refused to credit Bond for it—his hair, the glasses, the carefully modulated tones. He might not be a field agent, might not seek confrontation, but that didn’t mean they left him behind enemy lines when they went away. After all, he was the metaphorical angel and devil looking over their shoulders, whispering in their ears. They used his weapons, and if he gave a kill order, they followed it with the same cold-bloodedness he had in the issuing.

SPECTRE had been eye-opening. He’d never witnessed death in person until C’s fatal grapple with M. He’d never come quite so close to falling into enemy hands, or getting picked off by a stray bullet. Quartermasters in the past rarely had much contact with the field, but Q had willingly put himself into the fray.

So when M sent him off to France to steal encrypted data on a laptop, it didn’t take much convincing. 007 had worked his way through the ranks enough to get a partial picture of the operation, but if Q got his hands on the laptop, the full picture would piece itself together. They’d have the data not only on the operation itself, but also on buyers.

Scarlett stirred next to him. She flipped through a magazine, dressed in a dark suit. With her mahogany hair pulled back into a bun and the stark colors of a white blouse under a black suit, she looked every inch the competent bodyguard. Q, at least, was immensely pleased to have her along. One attempted snatching was terrifying enough. And he was reasonably certain that for all her fondness for him, if the situation looked hopeless, 004 could be counted on to shoot him and make sure he didn’t become a weapon in someone else’s hands. Silva cast a long, dark shadow.

“I have to say, Q, you’re remarkably calm for a man who’s supposedly afraid of flying.”

“Xanax is a beautiful thing,” he said, leveling up on Tetris. “And Heathrow to Paris is a short flight.”

She hummed noncommittally. When they landed, she ranged at his side like a wolf. Gone was the 004 who made kissy sounds at Jack and expected Q to open doors for her like a gentleman, and present was the cool lady killer with a Glock and a set of throwing knives. And plenty of license and willingness to use all of it and her bare hands on someone who displeased her.

They picked up the car waiting for them—a silver Ferrari 360. Scarlett snatched the keys from the attendant and didn’t quite manage to control a little shimmy as she slid behind the wheel. Q rolled his eyes. Agents and cars. It wasn’t even outfitted.

“We’ll settle in at the hotel. Our friend says that they’ll be at the gala tonight—that might be the best time to work. We’ll wait until they come down.”

“I’ll trust you to handle the guards, if any. 007 will keep a weather eye on them and alert us if they leave.”

“That seems like a weird sentence,” 004 said. “I keep thinking of Bond. He’d be appalled at the idea of being left somewhere as a lookout. He’d make me stay behind, just so he could ogle your behind a bit longer. And maybe play knight in shining armor.”

He gaped at her. “004!”

She shrugged. “It’s true.”

“It is not. He’d be off seducing some pretty young thing and probably wouldn’t let either one of us help.”

“It is so, and I have a twin sister so I can keep this game up all day.”

“SPECTRE almost got me because he got distracted by Dr. Swann,” Q snapped. And then he shut up, because he hadn’t meant to say that and he certainly hadn’t mentioned it to anyone before.

Scarlett whipped past the valet at the hotel and aggressively parked with a squeal of tires. She grabbed his seatbelt in a surprisingly iron grip and gave him a look that had spelled death for more than one man.

“Explain.”

“I don’t want to,” he said, eyeing her warily.

“Too bad. I knew there was something missing from that report. We all thought he’d finally seduced you and you were playing coy. _Not that there was an attempted kidnapping_.”

“They cornered me in the ski lift. I managed to escape by outrunning them and using the crowds as cover to duck into a maintenance closet. But by then, Bond was wreaking havoc nearby and blowing shit up, and I suppose that was more interesting than I was. And wait—who’s ‘ _we’_?”

“Oh,” she waved a hand, “All of us thought that. We hacked the file, noticed it was very slim, and speculated. I’m going to kill him. Hunt him down, and kill him. Slowly.”

“Please don’t.” Q said, mildly aghast. She had a thousand yard stare and a distinctly homicidal gleam in her eyes. “The paperwork would be ridiculous.”

“We’d do it,” she said. “You’re the only Quartermaster who’s genuinely given half a damn about any of us. Believe me when I say that someone needs but look at you cross-eyed, and we’d be happy to disappear them. _And_ do the paperwork afterward.”

She loosened the grip on his seatbelt and opened her door, the momentary crazy settled back behind her professional façade as she escorted him through the lobby and up to their room. She prowled the perimeter, scanning for bugs as Q set up a small mobile command center. He hacked the hotel records and security feeds, set programs running facial recognition.

“And now we wait,” he said, leaning back and stretching.

“The glamorous life of a spy,” 004 said, claiming one of the double beds and flipping on the telly.

***************

Q sidled up to the bar, next to the new 007. He tried not to fidget in his suit. It was immaculately tailored to him and even he had to admit that he looked good. Moneypenny had somehow gotten his measurements and presented him with a proper suit and a deep green collared shirt that she said would do wonders for his eyes, and pressed both a comb and hair gel into his hands.

[ _“You’re cute, Q, no reason to hide it in the field. Use it. The less you look like a boffin the better.”_

_“That may be so, but I resent the implication that I don’t have a comb.”_

_“Oh, honey, I know you have a comb. It’s whether or not you actually use it, ever, that keeps us all wondering.”_ ]

The end result meant that Q was dressed to kill, wearing his contacts for once, and his unruly locks tamed into a loose semblance of order. It seemed rather pointless to him—he rather thought he could just avoid the charity gala altogether and just go straight to the room, but both 007 and 004 concurred that a presence should be established for an alibi. It made the time frame even tighter, but Q bowed to their collective experience in the field and went along with it, even if he felt hyperaware of the palm-coded Walther nestled in the holster by his ribs.

 _Double-Ohs were odd creatures_ , he thought. _Fundamentally solitary by nature, but never passed up a party or an open bar_.

The new 007 gave him a subtle once-over.

“I'm Tomlinson,” the new 007 purred at him, eyes alight with good humor. Q smiled, leaning on the bar and returning the assessing look with one of his own. 007 was lovely to look at: long and rangy, with dimples, light blue eyes, and messy brown hair coiffed within an inch of its life tonight. 007 offered his hand to shake, just a shade off from a proper leer, and Q willingly took 007’s hand in both of his own.

"Pleased to meet you," Q said.

“Perhaps I’ll see you later tonight?” 007 said, leaning in a little too close to just be friendly.

Q’s lips twitched. The whole charade felt like an out-of-body experience. How often had he been on the other end of the comms, listening to lame pick up lines and come-ons? It rather killed the fun and mystique.

“I’m counting on it,” Q purred back, withdrawing his hands in a way he hoped signaled flirty.

007’s eyes sparked and he slid off into the crowd.

Q slid the keycard he’d lifted from 007 under a cocktail napkin and collected his and Scarlett’s drinks. He passed her the drink with a playfully distracting kiss on the cheek.

“Smooth move, handsome,” she murmured.

“Ready when you are,” he whispered back.

With a grin that was made entirely of wolfish cheer, she moved around him like silk and disappeared.

Mentally starting the clock, Q sipped his a disappointingly watered-down rum and coke on the rocks, only to be arrested by the sight of 007 staring at him from across a crowded ballroom. _His 007_. Looking as good as the day he drove off into the sunset, but with none of the peace he’d exuded that day.

He stared at Q as though Q were an illusion, something he didn’t dare hope actually existed.

And Q thought, _Oh, shit_.

 


	5. O, Never Say I was False of Heart

 

_O, never say that I was false of heart,_

_Though absence seemed my flame to qualify._

_As easy might I from myself depart_

_As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:_

_That is my home of love: if I have ranged,_

_Like him that travels I return again,_

_Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,_

_So that myself bring water for my stain._

_Never believe, though in my nature reigned_

_All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,_

_That it could so preposterously be stained,_

_To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;_

_For nothing this wide universe I call,_

_Save thou, my Rose: in it thou art my all. (109)_

 

Everything was falling apart. Bond felt his entire life, his love (did he love?), his very _mind_ sliding through his fingertips like silk. While Madeline worked fixing other people’s heads at her prestigious hospital amongst her equally prestigious new friends, Bond spent his days hunting through the streets of Paris. He marshaled his resources—contacts and assets who were still willing to speak to him—and haunted the high-society restaurants in an immaculate suit and tie, and the dingy backrooms where the real business was conducted.

Madeleine confronted him about it after a solid week of him coming and going at odd hours, returning to the flat smelling of whiskey and smoke, a wildness in his eyes and blood that just. Would. Not. Quit. And no amount of seduction and charm would cause her to look the other way anymore, just as no amounts of tears or soft words could sway him into compliance.

The rows were spectacular. And James Bond found, for the first time in his life, that there was a person on the planet who really would banish him to the sofa.

Really, aside from the crick in his back, at least he didn’t have to sneak out of bed anymore. And he’d slept on bare floors and rocky grounds before, so a sofa wasn’t anything to complain about.

His investigation into the criminal gang was fruitful. He haunted their shadows, tracking members to the industrial district, the stereotype of the dodgy warehouses stocked full of contraband. Bond broke into the warehouse and found a veritable dragon’s hoard of shiny new weapons destined for the wrong side of the Middle East. And, all right. He might have skimmed a bit while he was there. Just a few firearms and some ammo. They weren’t Q’s biometric weaponry (God, he missed his gun), but they’d do.

He might have also liberated some knives. And a grenade, and some of its friends. But really, nothing that would be immediately missed.

He kept tabs on the big bosses, and utilized a few of his contacts to keep an eye on the rest. French Intelligence was willing enough to lend a hand, provided they got the credit.

Bond felt the fire in the blood that meant things were getting close. He slipped out of the flat while Madeleine worked a double. In his suit and tie he blended into the hotel seamlessly, looking the part of just another wealthy businessman who wanted to assuage his conscience by donating money to some cause or another.

He tracked one of the bosses to the hotel bar. The man was good looking and knew it, currently trying to pull some gorgeous young thing who leaned in with a smoldering half smile and then away, determined to play hard to get.

Bond’s breath caught in his chest and his heart skipped a couple of beats.

Like a mirage, the gorgeous young thing turned his head, drinks in hand as he sought out his partner of the evening.

Q. And 004. But Q.

How long had it been since Bond had actually seen him in the flesh and not just shades of him in the people walking by on the street? But he’d never seen this version of Q: slim as a knife in a tailored suit, hair artfully disheveled, sans glasses, and moving with a breathtaking sort of grace and confidence that spoke of hidden danger. Here, in this place, he looked otherworldly, an ageless fae lord amongst mere mortals. Who would have thought it?

Q kissed 004 on the cheek, the easy familiarity and fox’s smile twisting something in Bond’s gut. Bond knew he was staring, knew that his training had taught him better, but oh, when Q finally looked in his direction.

The expression on the other man’s face was hard to pin down. Surprise battled with Q’s naturally cool demeanor, and finally resolved itself into something similar to dread and exasperation.

Too late, Bond realized he was moving toward Q. How could he not? Bond skimmed through the crowd, and this finally galvanized Q into action. He vanished through the press of bodies, but Bond wasn’t an amateur. Q was a lot of things but he wasn’t an outside cat, and Bond had the advantage of knowing how Q operated.

Well. He thought he did. Bond stepped into an empty corridor and Q was nowhere to be seen.

A hand reached out and yanked him into a side room without ceremony, and Bond found himself shoved back against a wall staring into furious green eyes. Well, this was familiar territory, Q being pissed off at him. Bond melted into the wall a bit, flying high. Just like old times, then. The fiery and restless thing in his soul quieted down to a purr. His hands found Q’s sides, a light touch he wouldn’t ordinarily dare, and that same fanged thing in his soul purred louder when he realized Q was wearing a shoulder weapon harness.

“Q,” Bond said, a smile curling the edges of his lips. “I see you finally met my tailor. I approve.”

Those green eyes sparked emerald in the pale light of the single lightbulb in the janitor’s closet.

“Don’t ‘Q’ me, Bond,” Q hissed, fingers tightening on Bond’s lapels. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Working. What are you doing here? Looking chummy with 004, no less?”

Okay, maybe that came out sounding a bit bitchy, but it was too late to take it back.

“Working, Bond, obviously.”

“Obviously. It’s Saturday night, after all, you wouldn’t be here of your own accord.”

Q made a quiet, snarling sound remarkably similar to the one made by the giant Russian Blue he owned, and let go of Bond, stepping back the half step that the closet allowed. To Bond, that half step felt like the bloody English channel and he winced. “Q.”

“Oh, fuck off, Bond. There’s a live op here tonight, and the last thing we need is a complication.”

“A complication, like the arms dealer who tried to pick you up in the bar ten minutes ago? He’s one of the ringleaders. Let me guess, 004 is currently clearing the way for you to break into their security.”

Q went absolutely still.

“That arms dealer at the bar is the new 007,” Q said. “We’re here because he can’t access all the records of the organization without leaving a trace.”

Bond frowned, straightening up from his slouch against the wall.

“Q…”

The man stared through him. “Shit. Something’s gone sideways. We missed something. Bloody hell, Bond, I knew he was too perfect.”

And then Q was yanking open the door and stumbling out into the corridor. Bond almost smiled. He could almost hear Q’s brain whirring as he looked down at his watch. Bond chased after him as the other man stalked down the hallways. Every time Bond had seen that look, it meant that a hapless agent or minion was about to lose something vital.

“Wait.”

“No.”

“It’s a trap, Q. They’re probably hoping to lure you out.”

“I’m aware.” Q fiddled with his phone, un-muting the line between him and 004. “And they aren’t the first. 004, we might have a logistical problem. Sitrep, 004. 004?”

Q tucked himself into a side corridor, using Bond’s body as cover for the probably very illegal things he was doing on his phone. A lock of hair fell into his eyes as he worked.

“R,” Q’s voice was even and Bond heard a current of absolute ice-cold steel under those tones for possibly the first time in their acquaintance. He fiddled with his phone a bit more, then swore, hands freezing over the buttons.

“They’re jamming us,” Q said grimly. “We’re on our own, and without communications.” He made for a staircase. Bond followed, approvingly. Elevators were death traps, even more so than stairs, when someone was hunting you.

“If something goes wrong, we’re to reconvene at the room. I’m going to assume 004 won’t be there. Are you armed?”

“You have to ask?”

“Good.” Q opened the door to 341. It was empty, but he paused to pick up another clip of ammo from the hotel safe.

“We have to get you out of here,” Bond said. “004 can handle herself.”

“I’m not abandoning her. We have the upper hand here, and I’m not going to waste it. You need to get out of jamming range, and put in a call to MI-6. Tell them we’ve been compromised, and need backup.”

“Q—”

“Do as you’re told Bond. And if you follow through with that impulse to throw me over your shoulder, I’ll warn you that 001 has taught me a few nasty little sparring tricks.”

“You aren’t a field agent.”

“I am tonight,” Q said. “Play our cards right, we can take this ring down now. We won’t get another chance. So if I’m walking into a trap, fine. I’m too valuable to immediately kill.”

“I’m going with you.”

“No. They don’t know you’re here, probably,” Q said. “You’re our ace. And if they do know you’re here, it will make them a bit nervous when they only catch one of us.”

All good reasons, Bond knew. Still. He had enough blood on his hands, and really didn’t feel like losing another person he cared about tonight.

So he did the only thing he could. He pasted on a shit-eating grin. “You’re not the boss of me, Quartermaster. I’m retired.”

*******

Once upon a time, Q had been accustomed to wanting to wring Bond’s neck on a regular basis. But usually the other man was safely out of reach, wreaking ill-advised havoc on the other end of a comm. For a moment, looking up at Bond in a nice hotel room, Q was reminded of Austria. Bond stood too close, just on the edges of propriety, those blue eyes staring at him with unaccustomed earnestness when he thought Q was entirely focused on something else.

God, Q hated the field. And 007. Both of them.

“I’m going to carry on the mission as though nothing is wrong and see what the evil plan is,” Q said. “You are going to call in backup. One way or another, this ends tonight.”

Without waiting, Q slipped past Bond and headed upstairs. Fear and rage battled it out in his gut, but Q wasn’t about to turn tail and run like a coward. Especially since he needed to know what happened to 004.

The corridor outside his target’s room was empty. The door was ajar—of course it was, damn would-be supervillains and their flair for the dramatic—and he pushed it open, gun in hand. The lights flared green as it recognized him.

There were already bodies on the floor. Two guards, neatly taken down and executed. And in the midst of the chaos, 004 on the ground. Q’s heart dropped through the floor. He saw blood, but she was facing away and he couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead from a distance. Q padded further into the room, stepping over corpses and reaching to take 004’s pulse when the click of a safety had him freezing.

“About time, Q,” said new 007 mildly. “I was about to get impatient. Please put down your gun.”

“Since you asked so politely,” Q quipped, putting the weapon down. He still couldn’t tell about 004, but he rather thought if new 007 had been alone with her for any length of time, he’d make sure he’d finished the job.

Q would grieve her later. Now, rage was winning over the fear. He slowly straightened, turning a bit sideways. Not that it would matter, but sometimes it was the tiny details that made all the difference.

_[“When fighting, you want to keep moving and make a smaller target of yourself. Harder to hit,” 001 said. Q was flat on his back on the mat, panting, as Edmund Walker lectured._

_“Keeping moving sounds like a lot more energy,” Q said._

_“Moving targets are harder to hit,” 001 said mildly._

_“What about a gunfight?” Q asked, rolling to his feet. “Moving a lot seems like a bad idea, unless I’m dealing with a sniper.”_

_“Well, then you’re probably fucked, if it’s close range. But still, most people can’t hit the broadside of a barn, and will hesitate before shooting a human.”_

_“That’s comforting.”_

_“Quite. Got your breath back?”]_

Q eyed the gun in 007’s hand. “Perhaps we should start at the beginning,” he said.

“Splendid idea,” 007 said, beaming. His eyes remained untouched by the usually friendly expression. “Please have a seat.”

“I’d rather stand,” Q said. “So. There’s no encrypted laptop of sensitive intel you can’t get your hands on, is there?”

“There is an encrypted laptop, actually. But I have full access, of course. I was the one who encrypted it to begin with. The best lies have a grain of truth, didn’t they tell you?”

“It might have come up,” he said dryly. “What’s the rest of the truth?”

“Finishing a job,” 007 said. “Do you have any idea how well you are protected in London? Between your minions, your agents, and your whole pack of sodding Double-Ohs, all plodding after you like a bunch of homicidal puppies, you are impossible to touch.”

Q nodded slowly. He did spend a lot of time in their company, especially after Austria. Except 003. The man still gave Q the creeps.

“This is about Austria,” he said.

“Austria,” 007 agreed. “We got word that you’d flown off to your precious James Bond. Those morons were supposed to catch you, and failed. But by time another attempt could be made, you had already gone back to MI-6. And then, of course, everything came crashing down spectacularly.”

007 started pacing. Q remained frozen, absolutely aware that all it would take was one second and a moment of ire and he’d be the body next to 004’s.

His earpiece crackled.

“Q? Do you copy?”

007 kept on with his monologue: “The only way to get to you was from the inside. That’s where I came in. Becoming a Double-Oh was icing on the cake—I really just needed to be an agent…”

Q forced himself to stay absolutely still, even as relief cascaded through him. R’s voice in his ear meant Bond was still out there, wreaking some kind of havoc. “Bond said you might be under duress, Q. Backup is on the way. We still can’t hail 004.”

“So why do you need me?” Q said. “I destroyed Nine Eyes.”

“Yes,” 007 said. “But you could build a better one.”

Q arched an eyebrow. “Over my dead body,” he said. “There’s no way I’m doing that. And you’ve no way to compel me. Especially since you went and killed 004. She was my favorite, she always brought her tech back, and I’m inclined to be contrary on her behalf, at the very least.”

“She was _one_ of your favorites,” 007 said. “James Bond is still out there in the wild, with his latest girlfriend. I’m quite sure you’ll find their safety compelling.”

Q started laughing. “Bond was an assassin whose worst day was levels above you at your best, and she’s the daughter of an assassin. Go right ahead. I dare you. 20 quid says they kill anybody you send them.”

007 raised the gun and fired off a shot. Too late, Q realized he was facing him head on, and the bullet skimmed his shoulder before he had time to flinch. 007 adjusted his aim for Q’s heart.

“I’m sure we’ll come to an agreement somehow,” he said amiably.

“Don’t bet on it.”

Two more shots rang out. This time Q did flinch and close his eyes. But when no searing heat or pain happened, he opened his eyes and checked himself out. Still standing, all limbs intact.

007 staggered back onto one of the beds, gurgling in surprise as the bloodstains on his suit grew.

Q spun around. Bond stood in the doorway of the hotel room, gun at the ready, eyes flinty and downright vicious as he stalked forward.

But it was the sight of 004, holding the other gun in one hand and pressing her hand to an apparently not-immediately-fatal GSW to her shoulder that had Q’s knees buckling a bit. He stumbled over to her side grabbing at the towel Bond threw him as he went to see how well his successor was dying.

He pressed it to the wound, and clicked his earpiece. “R? We need medical. 004 was playing opossum.”

“Good to hear, Q.” R said. “ETA is five minutes.”

“Don’t touch your earpiece,” Bond said, sighing.

Q gave him a two-fingered salute with his free hand.

“I’m really glad you coded this to recognize both of us,” Scarlett said.

“I’m going to invent a gun that recognizes me and won’t shoot me,” Q said.

Her eyes hazily picked out the shred on his suit. “Good idea. Who had the kill shot?”

“You did.”

“How’d’ya know?” she asked, deathly pale and easing back to lay down again.

Despite all, Q grinned brightly at her. “Because I really can’t bear the thought of being Bond’s damsel in distress at the moment.”

She nodded. “Fair ‘nuff. Still gonna kill him, probably. Just waiting for the world to not be so _swirly_.”

“Hold on just for another few moments, I’ll be right back,” Q said, placing her hand over the bloodied towel.

He rose and went to the bed. Bond was staring impassively down at his replacement, who finally gurgled his last.

“I want to come back, Q,” Bond said.

“You retired. Drove off into the sunset with the girl.”

Bond actually flinched, but his eyes were steady on Q’s. “I was wrong. I want to come home.”

Q swallowed, dragging his gaze away from the other man. Bond didn’t. Q felt the weight of Bond’s regard as clearly as the heat radiating from his body. “Well, we might have a job opening.”

*******

“Let’s get one thing straight,” Q said, meeting Bond at his front door. The boffin looked like himself again, looked like himself on Saturday nights. He wore faded and ripped blue jeans, a hideous but soft jumper he was practically swimming in, and his hair was standing up in all directions as though he’d been electrocuted.

Or stressed. Bond had been back for about a month after one last relationship dissolving row with Madeleine who’d seen this coming long before Bond himself did. However, between M keeping him jumping through hoops with a vengeful sort of glee and an impromptu assignment to Jamaica, Bond hadn’t had the time to seek Q out. Save for the times Q was in his ear during the assignment, and the few minutes he spent before and after the mission in briefings, the two of them hadn’t any contact. And Q was so damnably professional every time they did.

But tonight, Bond was off the clock and so was Q. After a year of no contact, Bond had spent a good fifteen minutes vacillating on the pavement before going up to the door. Since he barely had time to get his lockpicks out before Q was ripping the door open, Bond wondered if Q had been dithering on his side of things, too.

“All right,” Bond said cautiously. “What is it?”

Q stepped back to let him in. “I have no idea what you want from me, but I’m not a bloody consolation prize. You don’t get to waltz back in, pretending the last year didn’t exist and thinking you can ask favors of me again.”

“I won’t.”

It was a rare thing to see Q flustered and wrong-footed. Bond grinned. Q pursed his lips and gave Bond a gimlet-eyed look.

“Well, that’s a lie,” Bond said. “I’ll ask favors and get you into trouble, because you’re too damn good to leave one of your people hanging. But I won’t pretend nothing has changed.”

He advanced on Q, one slow predatory step at a time. Q lifted his chin, challenging Bond to do his worst and refusing to simply give ground. A thrill traveled down Bond’s spine. He’d always had a weakness for the smart ones, and the brave ones, and the ones with a core of absolute steel. The people he met who possessed all three qualities were usually his undoing, and Q had long been one of them, in his own way. But something had happened to Q in the past year that chipped away at veneer of harmlessness he used to exude. A year ago, he might have folded to Bond’s whims. Now he just set his stance and waited him out.

“Oh, and what has changed?” Q asked. Under the soft tones, Bond could almost feel the dagger at his ribs, and he grinned. Q’s eyes were huge, only a thin ring of green surrounding his pupils.

“I’m dying to find out,” Bond said, finally crowding Q against the wall next to his coat rack.

Q tilted his head, smiling his fox smile. “Dying is certainly a possibility,” Q said, breath ghosting over Bond’s lips. Then he planted a hand in the middle of Bond’s chest and sent him staggering back with a hard shove. But his fingers were tangling in Bond’s shirt as he followed his agent to the other wall and pressed him there.

“I’m not a consolation prize,” Q repeated. “You don’t go from playing house with a woman you barely knew when you ran away with her, to my bed just because you’ve seen the light and have decided that gawky boffin is the flavor of the day. You want me? Make it worth my while, Mr. Bond.”

Q leaned in and brushed his lips along Bond’s jaw and added a quick nip to his ear before he stepped back entirely. Still smiling, with soft green eyes alight with mischief.

Bond gaped at him. Q turned on his heel and sauntered to the living room. “We’re watching _Star Wars_ tonight,” he called over his shoulder. “We almost started without you.”

Bond followed him, clearing his throat. “We?”

Q’s living room was full of Double-Ohs (1, 4, 6, 9, and 11) and Moneypenny, and there was absolutely no way that they hadn’t been listening to the entire exchange. And judging by the gleeful looks, they were all well-aware that they were being deliberately used to cockblock any further seduction attempts for the evening. In particular, the still-recovering 004 was looking particularly malevolent, as she patted the sofa cushion next to her. With Q already ensconced in his overstuffed papason, there really wasn’t anywhere else to sit. Jack meeped a greeting and leapt onto Bond’s lap, head-butting him in the chest and purring.

The opening credits were rolling when the doorbell rang and Q hopped up, muttering about late pizza deliveries. Moneypenny went to help him, turning at the last moment to make a silent _behave, I’m watching you_ gesture at the room in general.

“Popcorn?” 004 asked sweetly. She offered Bond her bowl.

Bond eyed her warily. “No, I don’t think so.”

She took a piece and crunched it deliberately at him as the opening credits rolled. “You know what happened in Austria last year?”

Bond went very still. “A lot of things happened.”

“Near kidnapping attempt of our Q,” she said. “While he was chasing after you in the field, because you were misbehaving.”

001 leaned in from Bond’s other side. “We like him more than you, mate.”

“He gives us explosives,” Trevelyan said. Bond turned a look on him that clearly said, _Et tu, Brutus_?

“And cars,” added 009.

“Consider this your metaphorical shovel talk. Next time, real shovels will be involved. Understand us?” 0011 smiled with a sinister edge and handed him a cold bottle of beer.

“Perfectly,” Bond said, mouth twitching in a smile. The room full of Britain’s top predators beamed back at him.

“Welcome back,” said 009. The rest of them silently raised their beers (and 004’s soda, because Q wouldn’t let her drink with her pain meds, the brat) to him, and that was that.

Bond sank into the cushions of Q’s stupidly comfortable sofa as the man himself and Moneypenny returned with a stack of paper plates, napkins, and pizza boxes.

It was good to be home.

 


End file.
